The Power of One

MUSICAL EVENTS about Anne-Sophie Mutter... Mentions two Carnegie Hall concerts: Benjamin Zander leading the Boston Philharmonic and various New England choruses in a raucous performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, and Simon Rattle leading the Philadelphia Orchestra, and several busloads of singers, triumphantly overboard in “Gurrelieder,” an evening-length, youthful indiscretion by Arnold Schoenberg... Mutter is not merely a powerful player; she is also an intellectually formidable one. She dominated the New York musical scene this past month, making three appearances with the New York Philharmonic and giving two recitals at Carnegie, with the pianist Lambert Orkis. She played works by Webern, Respighi, Crumb, Bartok, Ravel, Lutoslawski, Bernstein, Berg, Sibelius, Rihm, Penderecki, Part, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev—all twentieth-century composers, and not always easy ones. If you also consider her physical beauty—her most recent CD-liner photos would do fine on the cover of Vogue or Bazaar—you might complain, as some of her colleagues do, that it’s all a bit much. But Mutter lacks the smug brilliance that one finds in many younger virtuosos of the Juilliard type. Her playing has a wandering, sometimes wild character, as if she had yet to find what she is looking for... She began as a protege of Herbert von Karajan... Mutter found her path when she encountered the music of Witold Lutoslawski, the late Polish master, who wrote in a vibrant, lyrical avant-garde style. She became an advocate of contemporary music, and, at the same time, her interpretations of mainstream repertory deepened... Like all great virtuosos, Mutter is a willful player who often twists the music to suit her personality... Mentions a heavy-handed recording of Beethoven violin sonatas... Writer concludes that she is “the world’s most exciting violinist.”